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10.38 pm
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham): I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) will reflect on the answer that we hope to receive from the Minister before we decide whether to divide the House. It is far from clear that we should not divide.
A number of questions need to be asked and answered, but before I come to them, may I say that I am extremely glad that the measure is not going through on the nod, which was the Government's intention? I intend to pose some of those questions, and I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), for one, will ask others. First, why are individual candidates being asked to contribute £10,000 rather than some other sum? There must be some logic in fixing £10,000 as the contribution. I ask the Minister, why £10,000 and not some other sum?
Secondly, if the candidates are to contribute £10,000, what balance will fall to the Exchequer? So far as I can see, the bill is not quantified. Surely we are entitled to
know exactly how much the measure will cost us. If it is neither enough nor too much, the House might decide to divide on this matter.
There is another question of considerable importance. Why was it decided to fix on a collective delivery? Applying ordinary principles, I should have thought that individual candidates were entitled to have their election addresses delivered separately. A point of principle is involved. If they are delivered collectively, who is to ensure that the Labour party does not, in one way or another, tamper with the material of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone)?
As a matter of fact, the Government are tampering with it in the legislation, because they have stipulated the order in which the election addresses will be printed. Surprise, surprise! The name of the hon. Member for Brent, East will not appear first in the bundle. It will be preceded by the Labour party's official candidate. That may be a coincidence, but I should be extraordinarily surprised if it was.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
The right hon. and learned Gentleman's right hon. Friends may have to wait a little longer.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst):
That is all right. The hon. Gentleman can take as long as he likes.
Mr. Hughes:
Be that as it may, the story of the money resolution began a long time ago, on 28 January last year, in the Standing Committee considering the Greater London Authority Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) asked the then Minister with responsibility for London, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), about expenses for the Greater London Authority election. The hon. Gentleman went on to run a candidate's campaign--he may now regret that, and think that he would have been better staying as Minister for London, but that is a matter for him.
On 28 January, the then Minister for London said:
When it came to the consultation, my hon. Friends and I, and others, suggested that the Government should consider the little issue of a freepost. When the Bill was
last before the House, I asked the Minister whether anyone had argued against a freepost in response to the consultation, and the answer was that no one had suggested that there should not be a freepost. To use the words of the then Minister, having had plenty of time to consider the issue carefully, take on board all the relevant matters and introduce sensible, practical expenses limits, the Government asked for views and then ignored them completely. They decided to resist the idea that for an electorate of 5 million people there should be a freepost.
It was not, therefore, altogether surprising that, when we debated the Representation of the People Bill on Second Reading, the issue did not come up on the money resolution. The clear implication all along had been that the money for the expenses would be dealt with under the Greater London Authority Bill (Election Expenses) Order. That was always the intention; that was what the consultation was about; and everyone expected that all the election expenses would be dealt with as a bit of business ancillary to the Bill. But, lo and behold, when it was suggested that we ought to have a freepost, the Government thought up another wheeze. The wheeze was, "We're terribly sorry, but you cannot have a freepost under the Greater London Authority Bill (Election Expenses) Order, because we would have to change major legislation, namely, the Representation of the People Bill."
Only last month, we began the second round of the debate. We became involved in a discussion with the new Minister responsible for London about the freepost for the London elections. The short history of the next month showed that the Government are not very good at maths.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire):
Had the hon. Gentleman supposed that they were?
Mr. Hughes:
I had not, but I think we have no better example of how bad they are at maths than what followed.
When asked about a freepost on 15 February, the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), said:
In Committee in the House of Lords, the Under- Secretary, Lord Bassam, had suggested that a freepost would mean a blank cheque.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
In the post.
Mr. Hughes:
Or not, as the case may be.
On leap year's day, 29 February, Lord Bassam said on the Floor of the House of Lords that, following negotiation:
As the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) said, we now have cause for a second money motion, just to sneak in the authority for this itsy-bitsy extra bit of money that the Government thought was £20 million, but which has now fallen to £2 million.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South):
It is a lot of money.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien):
The hon. Gentleman is having good fun, but he would not want to mislead the House, would he? He knows that we are talking about different things, and he knows that different things were discussed in another place. Are we discussing whether there would be a single mailshot to every voter, which would cost £750,000 per candidate--if there were 20 candidates, the cost could be £15 million--or are we discussing a much more disputable concept? While the hon. Gentleman has fun, let him be careful not to mislead the House over what was discussed in another place.
Mr. Hughes:
The threats are a bit late in the day. The deal has been done. The Minister was party to many of the negotiations. He knows perfectly well that the argument from the Government Benches all along was that it could not be done, was not achievable, could not be delivered and was not manageable.
We do not want to hang about, but I remind him that there are still some 15 months to go before the election of a mayor. We have plenty of time to consider the issue carefully, take on board all relevant matters and introduce sensible, practical expenses limits which will have the desired effect.--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 28 January 1999; c. 84.]
Time did not slow down, but Government activity seemed to get into some difficulty. It was not until 15 December that the consultation on expenses limits began. The Government asked for replies before the end of the Christmas holidays. They said, "You may not be able to get round to it, but that will be fine by us."
The total cost to the public purse of a free mailshot would be very significant. The total could well be over £10 million and possibly as much as £20 million, depending on the number of candidates . . . Such costs would be disproportionate to the GLA's proposed budget of some £35 million, and would be equivalent to more than £3 for every council tax payer in London.--[Official Report, 15 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 902.]
The truth is that the Government were exaggerating just a teeny weeny bit. By the time the Bill reached the other place and Lord Bassam spoke, the cost was well and truly up to £30 million and there was speculation that it might be significantly more.
we came up with a formula which reduces the cost considerably.--[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 February 2000; Vol. 610, c. 497.]
Over two weeks of negotiation, it appeared that the freepost would not cost £20 million or £30 million, but might only cost about £2 million. That was the argument that some of us had put in the first place, and, indeed, the argument that the Electoral Reform Society--which knows a bit about these matters--had put in the first place.
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